Local New York City news blog DNA Info reported today that former presidential candidate and North Carolina Senator John Edwards was patronizing prostitutes in 2007 — namely a call girl working for the so-called "Soccer Mom Madam" or "Millionaire Madam" on NYC's Upper East Side. A prostitute working for Anna Gristina reportedly told investigators that she was paid to have sex with Edwards while he was in NYC raising money for his failed presidential campaign. Edwards' lawyers of course deny this claim.

Edwards' pathological pattern of lying and cheating — first the Rielle Hunter affair, while his wife Elizabeth was dying of cancer, and now this — makes us wonder if he's more than just a cheater; if his philandering could be classified as a disease. Does his compulsion to cheat on his wife with multiple people mean he has a sex addiction?

It's certainly not out of the question, YourTango Expert Paldrom Collins, a sex addiction counselor, told me. Sex addiction is not about the quantity of sex a person is having, she said. It's about compulsion, and using sex to "replace something else in your life" — like a binge eater might use food to fill a void in their lives. Sex addiction negatively impacts the addict's life and the lives of those around him: If the person continues their actions despite causing his loved ones pain, there's a good indication he or she is a sex addict.

While you can't diagnose somebody without meeting them, said Collins, there is good reason to suspect John Edwards may be a sex addict. In which case, not only court, but a clinic, should be in his future.